It is my most sincere belief that a single all powerful being of with good intentions would spend his time eliminating ways for "power centers" to be created among people. Instead over the ages some great force in the universe has been insistent on creating power centers within the human populations.

These power centers are the number one reason why slavery has existed for so long and now morphed into something that people don't even recognize as such. These power centers are run by a few families in each country that are always pitting man against man, brother against brother and this is the reason wars are fought, and worthless sheets of paper are needed to exchange for the food you eat(money), the clothes you wear and the roof you hide under. These power centers are responsible for the laws that are supposed to prevent me from going out back and taking a whiz on a tree in broad daylight just because the neighbors may see(even though my closest neighbor is a mile away(and I do it all the time anyway))and they keep the lines drawn on the map so we call ourselves American, Canadian, English, Irish or ??? just because a line is drawn on a da_n map.

So yes if I were an all powerful singular consience with the power to make anything a reality for everyone I think that I would eliminate the ability for humans to achieve power centers in their existence. It would be my goal to make people incapable of colluding, and plainly so, together against another human that way every man is either for himself or with everyone. We, as humans, are in a big pile of crap now because their are a few thousand people with all of the money and the rest of us have nothing except big piles of debt.

I spent last weekend in Grand Rapids, MI(4 days) and we spent a day in Detroit because my wife wanted to see Belle Isle. Detroit is a perfect example of what the US is going to look like in another twenty years after the Rich get through sucking us dry. Detroit is a war zone. I saw very few houses that were occupied where most were boarded up and there was obviously a huge fire because we drove for almost a mile and everything we could see was burnt to a crisp.

SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT. Americans are not being told the whole story somewhere. I thought that Michael Moore was exaggerating with his views but he really isn't. I kept waiting for ROBOCOP to show up and shoot me.

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde

Well Mongrel you can go to any major city and see the same thing you did in Detroit. I live 45 minutes north of Detroit and I have watched the corrupt political leaders suck the city dry of all of its values and disregard its people as a means to collect money to perpetuate their greed.

Kwame Kilpatrick the last mayor is a felon and did nothing for Detroit but destroy it and steal from the coffers. It is very sad and I used to like going to Detroit for the fireworks and festivals but not anymore. Yet, Detroit has built a new stadium for football and baseball. If you go to the downtown area by the GM and Rencen buildings it looks great and vibrant. That is where the leaders want the public to go, not the adjacent areas.

When I lived near Cincinnati I saw the same thing you did in Detroit. Have you been in the neighborhoods of Chicago lately? I have and saw such decay there too.

Detroit has lost all the good people who used to live there and nothing is left but the people who can't get out, gangs, and drug houses. America's major cities all have sections they want the public to see and the sections they do not want anyone to see.

I was very surprised to hear that Detroit has dropped down low for crime and murder, way behind many other big cities. I guess the only ones left are the ones who killed everyone else off. We used to have a bill board on I-75 south of Detroit that said "Welcome to Detroit, where the weak are killed and eaten" but its gone now.

As a child I loved Detroit and we use to go to all the fun activities down town and at Belle Isle. Everyone with any money at all moved to the suburbia areas around Detroit.

I wouldn't judge Detroit so harshly, all big cities have the same neighborhoods you saw and many are worse....Philly anybody?

I apologize for I don't think that it was my intention to judge Detroit. I hope I simply reported what I saw. Tess you seemed to agree with everything I stated so I am a little confused. . . .

I was in Louisville two weeks ago where things are not great but that town has always had some real crappy areas, and the cancer keeps spreading. It used to be the west half of downtown but now pretty much everywhere you go, downtown, is run down like a ghetto. I was in Cincinnatti two years ago and you are right the entire south side of town was a very scary place especially at night, oh yes I know because I contracted some work out on their traffic data mining systems(ARTIMIS) thus we had to work at night. It has been a long time since I have been to Chicago but the one time I went their I hated every minute of it.

Tess you know I wasn't talking about a "neighborhood" as much as I was talking about the whole city and I cannot state it anymore clearly than I did earlier but I was literally worried for my wife's safety and it seemed like we drove for ten miles before we got out of the area(s) where comfort was not a word to be had. We never saw any police but we did see a slew of unmarked cars that had large men in them and it looked like they were wearing uniforms and armor of some kind - like body armor, like in the Marines.

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde

Well, if I were God I'd move everyone to Wyoming so you could all have a job (if you wanted one) and you would not have to lock your doors and you would feel safe walking down the street at midnight.I'm being kind of silly in this because I would rather live in northern CA. :-)But seriously...I wish you all felt safer out there. It makes me sad to hear that folks don't and that the cities and towns they live in are not safe and they have fallen on such bad times.Also if I were God..we would all go to heaven no matter what. Earth has been it's own little hell and I think we all deserve to get out of here.JUst my opinion.

if i was god i'd issue a statement (by way of revelation of course) disassociating myself with the american government. ironic that in the richest country in the world 20% of the population is living in a 3rd world country. watched a doc about us healthcare and housing last night. not news to me but deeply disgusted all the same. as for obama - change my ass. see you next tuesday, dude.

[quote=Jilly]"If you were God, how would you run the universe?" [/quote]
I would expect this entry to eventually surpass all others in replies and views. It is after all a question that has been asked countless times and like the "moth to the flame", almost irresistible to humans to project themselves into that "role" (or take a peek to compare what others say they would do if [i]they[/i] were wearing that mantle).
But to the task at hand - responding to the question.
[i]"If I was God..."[/i], the first thing I would [u]not[/u] do again - - is allow a talking snake to access my garden on the third-rock-from-that-relatively-minor-star they call the "sun" to prevent it from misleading my first two children!
Kidding aside, being finite creatures it is difficult to either imagine or understand how (or why) an all-powerful being that is [u]also[/u] described as a "loving" all-powerful being would have allowed the horrors that we know about historically for generations upon generations to occur much less why such things are still permitted to continue.
Perhaps there is "something", some cause célèbre that we mortals do not know about or cannot comprehend, some reason for allowing "us" to go through all of this that will ultimately contribute to a grand solution, a restoration to an original purpose, a "case-law" sort of standing afterwards that would be used to prevent all of "this" to ever happen on Earth again much less anywhere else in the "universe".
That would be my hope - as a mortal - that if there is a "vast eternal plan" playing itself out - then a better place results after it has run its course and the dust settles than what we have today.